Students take to the sea for studies

Elizabeth Miller

Sunday

Jun 28, 2009 at 12:01 AM

ABOARD THE PELICAN - While some university student lab jobs entail hours of scooping rat droppings or entering statistics into databases, other research assignments have students jumping off the deep end - literally.

ABOARD THE PELICAN - While some university student lab jobs entail hours of scooping rat droppings or entering statistics into databases, other research assignments have students jumping off the deep end - literally.Graduate-student researchers at Louisiana State University - and other state schools of higher education - weave their way through the coastal wetlands of Louisiana into the northern Gulf of Mexico on monthly research trips, aboard The Pelican, a 116-foot research vessel, to collect water and sediment samples for LUMCON. They use the samples to study everything from temperature and salinity to pollutant toxins in shellfish.The Pelican has spent nearly all of June and will spend nearly all of July on research trips.The Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, an organization composed of the 20 Louisiana colleges and universities that provides research and educational facilities on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, organizes the two- to three-day trips with university scientists. Students begin their journeys with late-night departures at the consortiums research labs in Cocodrie."One of the primary benefits is they (students) get real-world experience on a first-class research vessel," said Quenton Fontenot, program coordiniator for the marine and environmental biology master's program at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux. "Not many people get a chance to go and experience a research vessel as the quality of The Pelican."The Pelican's six-person crew steers the boat to the first research station, about seven hours offshore, while students and researchers catch a few hours of sleep in the ships dormitory-style rooms below. The boats follow a transect of stations located within 50 miles of the coast. At each station researchers use methods varying from throwing a bucket overboard to collect water samples to employing an onboard crane to gently lift and pull specialized machinery in and out of the Gulf waters.Fontenot said a group of undergraduate students returned from a class on The Pelican two weeks ago."As of right now we don't have any graduate students whose research project is involved with The Pelican," said Fontenot who has never taken a trip on the vessel.Even with strict safety standards including a no-tolerance alcohol or drug policy to wearing hard hats and life jackets on deck, students say the time spent on the boat is a nice break from long days spent inside labs back on campus.Ana Christina Garcia, 24, a second-year graduate student in oceanography, said she enjoys trips on the boat because she is able to interact with other researchers on the water.

The Atlanta native who is studying pollutant toxins in shellfish uses the time between stations "napping, eating small snacks, catching up on homework and gossiping."The researchers say they don't get seasick, almost chuckling at the idea because of the amount of time spent on the water, but one crewmember said researchers new to the boat and visitors often spend more time in bed below deck then conducting research.But with meals at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. cooked by a gourmet chef, veteran researchers and crew say the long hours and hard work are worth it.Depending on their studies and the type of equipment used, some researchers have more work than others while on the boat. Jennifer Lasseigne, 28, a Ph.D student from Ricohoc, is hoping to study a historical timeline of one of the fastest-growing threats to Louisiana's Gulf Coast - hypoxia.Hypoxia, commonly known as the dead zone, forms each summer in some layers of the Gulf when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life. It occurs because algae growth stimulated by Mississippi River pollutants are released upstream and flow into the Gulf. The decomposition of the algae consumes oxygen faster than it can be replenished from the surface, thus decreasing levels of dissolved oxygen in the water which are crucial to the habitats of fish, shrimp and other marine wildlife."Whenever The Pelican goes out ... to look at the dead zone, there are several other projects booked at the same time," Fontenot said. "Scientists will book time on the boat and go and collect data for whatever project they are working on."Fontenot said it's rare for the south Louisiana vessel to stay docked."That boat is out on a cruise more often than it's in," he said.Lasseigne uses a box core, a metal machine that drops to the bottom of the sea, which pushes itself into the mud and uses a trap door to collect samples of the ocean floor. She collects foramphonifera, a microscopic animal that leaves a shell behind as a fossil. The fossils are analyzed to indicate oxygen conditions or past environmental conditions."We use it to see what species are alive right now in the Gulf and hopefully use that to reconstruct some historical timelines of the species," Lasseigne said.

Fontenot said the vessel is a remarkable asset for Nicholls students - a vessel that teaches teamwork."You get a lot more out of that (a research trip on The Pelican) than you do from a textbook or classroom situation," he said.The Pelican costs about $8,000 a day to operate, but according to LUMCON's director, Nancy Rabalais, the marine operation is funded by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. Rabalais said the boat is but "a small part compared to the technical staff that I have to put on board, and the post laboratory work and data management."However, because of the specialized research done on Louisiana's coast, the consistent results and the research experience gained by students, she calls the cost "priceless."

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